


If Things Were Different

by C_Lisel



Category: Father Ted
Genre: Angst, Interior monologue, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Pining, Ted POV, Unrequited Love, and commas, atrocious use of tenses, oh lord the commas, priests being sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-27
Updated: 2019-10-27
Packaged: 2021-01-04 03:10:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21190592
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/C_Lisel/pseuds/C_Lisel
Summary: "Have you ever been in love, Ted?"Father Crilly reflects on the complexity and impossibility of his feelings for Father McGuire, as a truthful answer to an innocent question would surely bring the parochial house to the ground.





	If Things Were Different

**Author's Note:**

> Recently I was looking through my old Ted fics and I realised that I was not happy with the way I had written the Ted/Dougal relationship. I really wanted to write something before I posted some of those fics that addressed the harsher realities of being involved in this kind of relationship, and also the fact that Dougal is far too barmy to reasonably be expected to engage with them.  
Editing this has given me a major headache but I wanted to see this fluke of a writing session through to the end, so there may be a few minor changes made when I have a clearer head.

**“Have you ever been in love, Ted?”**

It should be an easy enough question to answer, especially for a priest. Perhaps it would have been for him, if he were any normal priest. For a normal priest there should be no deeper love, no more meaningful relationship in his life than the one he had with his God. It should be He who brought him comfort in the darkness, He who was his most trusted and treasured companion, and He who gave him peace at the end of it all. For Ted, that had been true. Until Dougal had entered his life and suddenly there was no more normal, and he had to admit that maybe the truth never would be again.

It could be so easy. So quickly had their lives entwined that almost nothing would have to change, if only he could say how he truly felt. If only Dougal could ever feel the same for him. Already they go to bed together, in what may as well be the same bed for how close they were crammed in that tiny, completely not fit for purpose room. They say ‘goodnight’ in the evening and ‘good morning’ when they wake up, still within touching distance, having spent the night listening to the other’s snores and watching their form in the gloom and dreaming of long days spent together, together, together. Now it was Dougal who brought him comfort, he who he trusted and treasured and found peace with. Who he loved, and who could never know.

It would have been so easy, his treacherous thoughts whispered, to awake under the warmth of shared sheets made hot by the presence of someone else pressed close against his side. To enjoy the physical love in which he had sworn never to indulge. Each morning he could reach out until his fingers brushed against the soft, unblemished skin that mirrored the untroubled forehead upon which he would press a daily kiss. Then he would cross to the dresser to prepare for another too short day spent meandering through arbitrary conversations filled with laughter and biting snark and long shared looks that said everything else; until finally they could shut the bedroom door once more against propriety and bishops and bloody small island politics and just be their own kind of normal.

So, so easy, to take the last two steps that still remained between their unbearably, wonderfully tangled lives, across that tired little room in which there was only space for the two of them; just him and the most important person in his mortal world. He thought about how those steps would take him closer than he would usually allow himself, so that he could look into Dougal’s painfully expressive eyes as he finally gave up his new truth in answer to his easy, impossible question. It was only a fantasy, but one in which he could let himself raise a hand to Dougal’s cheeck as he waited for his affections to be returned. He would hold him with a reverence which before he had reserved for holy artefacts, and would once more draw from the well of emotion he had nurtured a lifetime ago at the seminary when love had been more than just his name. Those precious reserves of feeling that he had spent so freely in his youth had quickly run dry after his arrival at the island and the ceaseless numbing moaning of the parishioners that resided on it. Yet somehow with Dougal the drought had ceased, and he could once more feel how it was to experience the world and the wealth of feelings that came from being young and in love with something which gave more than it took.

**“Have you ever been in love, Ted?”**

It was too easy to forget that none of this was normal, and none of it was true. Their reality, on which Dougal already had only a tenuous grasp, would not cope with the onslaught of confusion and fear and anguish a confession would unleash. The mind that had so disarmed and charmed him with its dogged devotion to its own naïve guidelines of right and wrong was too shallow to fathom the implications of Ted’s deviancy. Nothing could be easy now. He was no longer a flighty ordinand who could hope and dream, and experience wonder anew. Who could turn away and step back through the open door to a life filled with possibilities he now knew he had been too swift to give up. He was no longer young, and now it was too late.

**“Only once”. **

In another time, another place. Another life. If things were different.


End file.
